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Last week, I offered my schedule for CONduit (which is this weekend, come see me!) as well as a self-imposed deadline to finish the latest rewrite of The Aeronaut, which is–hopefully–my next book to see release.

Well, I'm happy to report that I finished it that night. I powered through the last few thousand words that needed to be written and revised everything that else that needed changing. I drastically re-wrote the ending, which was incredibly difficult for me to do. The ending that was written originally was a series of scenes that I had been dreaming of years before I ever even began to write the book. In fact, I wrote the first pieces of the book as I'd originally imagined it back in 2008 after percolating the story for a while even then.

It's something that's been very close to me. It's a personal story and it's important to me that I get it right. But the ending wasn't working. My original idea wasn't what the story morphed into. It's not what the book needed.

And that's what is most important. When you're editing, it's vital to do what's best for the piece, not serve the prior visions of the story you might have had.

"Kill your babies," is sound advice I've received numerous times from a variety of mentors and it's served me well. Kill them without hesitation. It will hurt, but if it's for the good of the piece, what else are you going to do?

To that end, I received a look at the rough version of the front cover and was told I could share it. I think it's absolutely gorgeous and will only get better by the time it's finished:

I've been so lucky with my covers and their designs and this one takes the cake. I love how it's the colors of the French uniform... And Preston there on the front... I'm just really excited for you all to finally read the book.

The next big bit of news:

I'll be a guest on the Stuff You Missed in History Podcast at their first live show in New York in October as part of New York Comic-Con's "Super Week." We're going to have an incredibly fun conversation about presidential assassination and you won't want to miss it. You can buy tickets to the event here.

Much sooner than that, I'll be a guest at Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio from June 3-7 and I'll be doing lots of great panels about writing. I'll be publishing my schedule next week, be sure to come if you're in the area. It's going to be super informative. And Mike Stackpole and Timothy Zahn will be there, too.

Origins is also publishing their annual anthology, and my story, "Double Cross in Deep Space," will be for sale there.

And next week, we'll be doing a signing at Eborn Books on Main Street in Salt Lake City next Friday for Apollo's Daughters. I'll have more information about that next week.

On the writing front, I started a new short story for my science fiction/space opera collection, as well as a new fantasy novel. I'm excited to tell you more but, to be honest, I've written four other books between The Aeronaut and this book that I can guarantee it'll be years before you hear more about this book except for updates here.

As for other writing: I interviewed Geoff Johns and Gary Frank for Huffington Post. We talked mainly about Batman: Earth One Volume Two, but there was a really fascinating exchange about designing the world in character. Batman's costume, for example, is designed quite specifically by the artist through the eyes of this particular Bruce Wayne and we spoke about how to get in the head of a character and create things from their perspective. It made me think a lot about getting deeper into the heads of my characters rather than the whims of myself as a writer. In any case, you can read that interview here.

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I have twenty or thirty notebooks and journals filled up with snippets about writing, my plans for stories, bits of dialogue, interesting ideas, plotlines, scraps of short stories, and a dozen other things. I carry one with me at all times and it takes me a couple of months to fill one up.

One of the things I've kept in one of my notebooks was a collection of writing tips and rules that I've collected over the years in my travels. From teachers, from books, from wherever. Most of my career has been spent screenwriting, so a lot of these are most applicable to that, but I wanted to present them so they might be of use to you as well.

I've never stopped collecting these over the years and I never will.

To start the list are Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules of writing. They are the first in my notebook and, I think, the most useful. I'll add a star to those I think are applicable most to screenwriting. Some of these aren't applicable to everyone in every situation, but…

We're going to break down another scene this week, and it's one of my favorites in cinema history. It comes from the ending of City Lights by Charlie Chaplin, which I think is the greatest romantic comedy ever made.
It's a touching film from 1931 and I would make it mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to learn to tell a story.
The scene we're going to be breaking down comes from the very end of the film, so if you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it for you. Go watch the film. You can rent it for $3.99 in HD on Amazon or for free on Hulu with a free trial or plus subscription. You should just buy the Blu-ray, though. You're going to want to revisit it.
For those of you familiar with the movie, or for those of you who are going to ignore my pleas to watch it and go ahead with this post anyway, I'm going to set this clip up a bit before you watch it. City Lights tells the story of Chaplin's Tramp and how he falls in love with a blind flower …

It's been a long time coming, but I think an upgrade to my web presence was long overdue. I began this blog in 2005 and it's served me well over the last 13 years. My goal in those early days was to write a short story every month. Back then, that was the only writing I was doing.

This website, then called "Bryan's Short Story Corner," got me into a regular writing habit. One that I still maintain today. I hoped it would help me get eyeballs on my words and, looking back at some of those early short stories, I shouldn't have wanted any of those eyeballs looking. Today, my Patreon fills that void. There is a dedicated group of supporters there that help subsidize my ability to write short stories on the regular.

After I started publishing books, this blog morphed into a place to talk about my projects and writing and it worked well enough for that for a long time. But now I have Twitter and Medium for those functions and they have much cleaner and easier inte…

About Me

Bryan Young works across many different media. As an author, he's written the bestselling comedic novel Lost at the Con, and the critically acclaimed sci-fi adventure Operation: Montauk. As a film producer, his last two films were released by The Disinformation Company and were called “filmmaking gold” by The New York Times. He’s also published comic books with Slave Labor Graphics and Image Comics. He’s a contributor for the Huffington Post, StarWars.Com, Star Wars Insider and the founder and editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot! He's also the host of the popular podcast "Full of Sith."